1. Field of the Invention
The present disclosure relates generally to digital image processing, and more particularly, to systems and methods for embedding and retrieving information in digital images and using the information to organize, process and control the digital images. The present disclosure also relates to a method and system for designing and affixing symbology into digital and printed images and using that symbology to link these images to a global computer network to allow the organization and processing of these images both while in digital form, and later when in printed form.
2. Description of the Related Art
Photographs are taken for a variety of personal and business reasons. During the course of a year, an individual may take numerous photographs of various events. During these events, quite often there are a variety of different individuals and items present in these photographs. In the prior art, when one desires to catalog these images in a particular order, they usually are left to placing these images manually into photograph albums. This is a very extensive, manual procedure requiring a significant amount of time. In addition, it is very limited with regard to the amount of information that can be associated with the image in a quick and easy manner. While some photo albums allow the writing and placing of text, the entering of this data is a very time consuming and arduous affair. Once having sorted these images into particular albums which may represent categories of interest, it is extremely difficult to retrieve and/or reorganize the images into other categories.
With the advent of digital cameras and digital imaging, the process of organizing images and associating information with the images has become even more difficult. Firstly, upon capturing an image with a digital camera, the camera simply gives the image a numerical file name which usually has no meaning to the user and makes it difficult to retrieve the image at a later date. Secondly, with the technological advances in file size compression and increased capacity of storage media, several hundred images may be taken before a user downloads the images to a computer or other device, making it a very time consuming task to associate information to each image.
Therefore, a need exists for techniques for easily associating information about an image to the image and using the information to control and retrieve the image. A further need exists for encoding the associated information so that the associated information may be unobtrusively presented with the image in printed form and using the encoded information to organize, control and manipulate the image.